My research is of a comparative nature focusing first on the emergence and development of the public schools while demonstrating that similarities exist between higher schools in Japan of the Meiji cra and public schools of the Victorian cra, and sccondly on analysis of similarities and differences between the two making use school registers and other avaitable data. I hold that the higher schools were not necessarily open to the poorer strata of society, reflecting the mechanism of social reproduction, and conversely that public schools were not the exclusive domain of the upper class indicating that the mechanism of social mobility was at work. I also hold that the public schools succeded in creating a 'generalist elite' in the form of politicians and administrators capable of paternalistic leadership, but failed to develop a corps of 'specialist elites' such as scientists. The higher schools emphasized natural sciences as well as the humanities, producing both types of elites. The public schools, by emphasizing tradition and the culture of the gentleman, produced an elite which was stable and well-grounded, but which lacked a spirit for innovation. By contrast the emphasis on 'cultivation' in the higher schools was in effect a matter of absorbing Western culture and of severing tics with traditional Japanese culture. Because of this' the higher school elite was unable to form an opposition to the 'invention of tradition' dominant in the rise of militarism. In considering Japanese elite education of the future, it would be valuable both to reflect on the changes undergone by the public schools surviving today in post-war society, as well as to speculate on the effect the higher schools might have had on post-war Japanese society had they survived the war.